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Puppetry in the 21St Century: Reflections and Challenges

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Puppetry in the 21St Century: Reflections and Challenges Puppetry in the 21st Century: Reflections and Challenges Edited by Marzenna Wiśniewska and Karol Suszczyński The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw Branch Campus in Bialystok, Puppet Theatre Art Department Puppetry in the 21st Century: Reflections and Challenges Puppetry in the 21st Century: Reflections and Challenges Edited by Marzenna Wiśniewska and Karol Suszczyński Reviewer: Prof. Ida Hledíková, Ph.D., The Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Faculty of Theatre Proofreading: Timothy Williams, Ph.D. Layout, typesetting and cover design: Jacek Malinowski On the cover: graphic by Grzegorz Kwieciński from the performance Ręce [The Hands], Teatr Ognia i Papieru (1980) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing form the publishers. Copyright © 2019 by Marzenna Wiśniewska and Karol Suszczyński Copyright © 2019 by the Publisher Free e-book version Publisher: The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw Branch Campus in Bialystok, Puppet Theatre Art Department Sienkiewicza 14 Str. 15-092 Bialystok, Poland https://atb.edu.pl ISBN: 978-83-88358-07-4 Puppetry in the 21st Century: Reflections and Challenges Edited by Marzenna Wiśniewska and Karol Suszczyński The Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw Branch Campus in Bialystok, Puppet Theatre Art Department Table of Contents Marzenna Wiśniewska, Karol Suszczyński Introduction 7 Part 1: Being an Artist of Puppet Theatre Marek Waszkiel Puppeteer: Craftsman, Actor or Creator? 12 Marzenna Wiśniewska Performers in Polish Puppet Theatre 18 Miyako Kurotani Searching for Traces of Life in Lifeless Things 32 Oriane Maubert Puppet and Dancer, Choreography of Object-body: Meeting, Control and Vertigo 38 Zofia Smolarska Towards Sustainable Change. Craftsmanship in Polish Puppet Theatres: an Ecosophical Perspective 54 Part 2: Challenges of Puppet Theatre and Research Eric Bass Colliding Worlds. Puppet Theatre Dramaturgy in a Time of Social Injustice 70 Julie Postel Toward a Disembodied Puppet: Vibrational Presences and Illusory Animation 80 4 Agata Drwięga Non-Human Puppet Theatre. An Empathic Approach to Horses, Giraffes, Dogs and Other Animals 94 Karol Suszczyński Diversity of Means of Expression in the Polish Puppet Theatre for Adults: Since the Beginning of the 21st Century 108 Martyna Friedla ‘The Other’ in Contemporary Polish Puppet Theatre 124 Part 3: Organization and Education Maria Janus The Influence of a Theatre’s Organisational Structure on the Work of Puppet Theatres in Poland and Germany 140 Sarah Vecchietti Berlin and Charleville-Mézières: Two Models of European Puppetry School. A Proposal to Research the Transmission of Puppet Knowledge and Practices 158 Tomasz Graczyk Images in the Space of Mind: The Body Training of an Actor-Puppeteer 170 Notes on Contributors 181 Index 187 Illustrations 193 5 6 Introduction The end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries brought heightened visibility of puppets and performing objects in various fields of cultural performance, so that we might call these last decades ‘a puppet moment’ – as Claudia Orenstein points out in the introduction to the book The Routledge Companion to the Puppetry and Material Performance.1 We are profoundly convinced of the truth of this reflection and we see in this point of view an important research challenge, one that leads toward a discussion about the processes, tendencies, and influences shaping contemporary puppetry in different countries. The intention of our monograph is to present theoretical and practical ideas, analyses and questions which have arisen since the turn of the century under the influence of the latest puppet performances and works inspired by puppet art. The collection of articles naturally represents only a few of the possible approaches to these topics, but we hope it provides a glimpse of multidirectional contemporary reflection and different perspectives of re- search now being applied to (and demanded by) puppet art. This book originated at the International Conference ‘Puppet Theatre in the 21st Century’, organised by the Puppet Theatre Art Department in Bialystok of the Aleksander Zelwerowicz National Academy of Dramatic Art in Warsaw and Białostocki Teatr Lalek [Bialystok Puppet Theatre] in June 2016, in conjunction with the 8th International ‘Puppet-no-Puppet’ Festival of Puppetry Schools. The conference intended above all to provide a forum young European researchers exploring the phenomenon of puppet theatre, and encouraged scholars to share new methodological strategies in theory 7 1 Posner, D. N., Orenstein C., Bell, J. (ed.), (2014), The Routledge Companion to Puppetry and Material Performance. London: Routledge. Taylor&Fracis Group, p. 2. and puppet theatre practice. The book Puppetry in the 21st Century: Reflections and Challenges combines selected contributions presented during con- ference discussions with other articles written specially for the monograph. This volume’s authors are both researchers and practitioners, so the book features scholarly discourse together with puppeteers’ accounts of their experiences. These investigations highlight the redefinition of the terms ‘puppet’, ‘animation’, ‘puppeteer’ in contemporary theatre and performance, analyse the different modes of relationship between puppet/performing object and puppeteer, focus on artists and works exploring the borderline between the puppet theatre and other performing arts, including dance, and show the interdependencies among organizational approaches and models of studying and practicing puppetry in different countries and the aesthetic tendencies in puppet theatre. The book is divided into three parts. The first one, Being an Artist of Puppet Theatre, focuses on the question: what kind of artist is the puppeteer of today? Marek Waszkiel confronts the tradition of puppeteer as craftsman and independent artist, creator of invented puppet worlds (e.g. Neville Tranter, Duda Paiva) with the model of puppeteer as actor cultivated in institutional puppet theatres in 20th century Eastern Europe. Using performance study methodology, Marzenna Wiśniewska considers the performative potential of the puppeteer. Her work focuses on the strategy of puppeteer presence and bodily expression, the puppeteer’s relationship with performing objects, and the event nature of such performances; she analyses three modes of puppeteer-performer, represented in the contemporary puppet theatre in Poland by Grzegorz Kwieciński, Tadeusz Wierzbicki and Adam Walny. The Japanese puppeteer Miyako Kurotani from Theatre Genre:Gray here offers a brief presentation of her idea of the puppeteer and his/her training. For Kurotani, a puppet is a unique form of existence that remembers its material origins and possesses its own individual energy; a puppeteer is thus someone who discovers an object’s ‘traces of life’ trough their relationship with it and ‘brings it back to life’ through a kind of manipulation of that object. For Oriane Maubert, the concepts of the puppet and the ‘return to life’ are reminiscent of Heinrich von Kleist’s comparison between puppet and dancer; in her work, Maubert considers common threads between dance and puppet theatre on the contemporary stage. Her analysis focuses on performances by Gisèle Vienne, Duda Paiva, Ilka Schönbein, companies WHS and Sungsoo Ahn Pick 8 up Group, the Compagnies Moussoux-Bonté and Pseudonymo. That section closes with Zofia Smolarska’s essay, calling for reflection on the craftsmen who work in puppet theatre’s back-stage professions. Her paper presents the results of qualitative field research conducted at six Polish puppet theatres, including interviews with craftsmen, and analyses the economical, technological and artistic context of their work. The section Challenges of Puppet Theatre and Research is focused on the pup- peteer response to the issues relating to philosophical, aesthetical, cultural and social transformations at the turn of centuries. Eric Bass from the Sand- glass Theatre opens this section with his view of puppet theatre as a medium of empowerment. His case study of a group of international theatre projects (from The Story of the Dog in Cambodia to the recent Babilon) explores the potential of puppet theatre for confrontation and engagement with some difficult issues of our time: war, social injustice, and refugee crises. Julie Postel’s article offers reflection on a number of contemporary artists (François Lazaro, Nick Steur, Gisèle Vienne) and groups (Morbus Théâtre, Cie Non Nova) who confront the audience with the emergence of visibility and visuality in contemporary culture. The fragile and discontinuous presence of puppets and the relationship between the puppet’s ‘two bodies’ – material and non- physical/phantom – leads Postel to revise the definitions of the terms ‘puppet’ and ‘animation’. Agata Drwięga proposes posthumanism and animal studies as productive methodologies for developing strategies of heightened animal presence and representation in puppet theatre. Handspring Puppet Company and a Polish play, Baltic. Pies na krze [Baltic. The Dog on an Ice Floe], present- ed by Miejski Teatr Miniatura [Miniatura City Theatre], are examples that go beyond conventional anthropomorphism toward theatre creation that resto-
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